California Mission Pilgrimage(6)
Day Seven: Easter Thursday
Mission Santa Clara
We were only planning to visit two
Missions this day, and then spend the night with my mother, who lives in the
East Bay Area. We started with Mission
Santa Clara. This Mission is totally
unique because it is located on a college campus! It is the church for Santa Clara University,
a Catholic college. The chapel is a
beautiful building in the middle of campus, and the inside of the church is
really rather stunning. One problem,
however, is that the office doesn’t open until 1:00. We were ready to leave about 10:00, but we
also wanted our passport stamped. One of
my sons and I explored the student commons and the campus ministry office,
searching for a stamp, to no avail.
We ended up coming back after visiting
Mission San Jose, only about half an hour away, and found a student in the church
office who let us in an hour early and gave us our stamp.
The old cemetery has been turned into a rose garden
Mission San Jose
Not far from Santa Clara is Mission
San Jose. This Mission is in a busy
downtown area, very different from the rural setting of most of the Missions we
had visited the previous few days. The
Mission contains a modest museum area, which we actually found to be pretty
nice, even after having visited so many.
Then, of course, there is the church itself, which still serves a parish
community.
That is one thing to be careful of
when visiting the Missions. It is great
to be able to attend Mass there, but sometimes there is a wedding or a funeral
(as we would discover the next day) and visiting the church may not work out.
What the Mission looked like in its early years
